US Teen Who Broke Caymans Quarantine Talks About It

Skylar Mack talks to 'Good Morning America' after her Friday release from prison
By Kate Seamons,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 19, 2021 2:18 PM CST

Skylar Mack is back on US soil and owning up to the mistake she made that landed her in prison for 32 days in the Cayman Islands. The 18-year-old flew there in late November and was to quarantine for 14 days per local regulations despite a negative COVID test; instead, she took the monitoring bracelet off her wrist after just two days and went to watch her boyfriend compete in the Caymans' Jet Ski racing national championship. Her four-month sentence was trimmed to two months, and she spoke out for the first time in a Good Morning America interview on Tuesday. "The anger, this disappointment, it's all justified," she said. "I was like, 'You know what, I made this mistake, and it sucks, you know, but you did it to yourself.'"

She described removing her tracking bracelet as a "conscious decision" and later said,
"It was a selfish decision ... I don't expect anybody to ever forgive me. But I would like for them to at least let me be able to show them that I did learn from it." Mack says she never contracted COVID and no one who attended the sporting event appears to have gotten sick there, reports ABC7. The New York Times reports Mack's grandmother had expressed concern that the college junior could lose her scholarship at Mercer University because she missed the start of this semester; a rep for the Georgia school told the paper Mack wasn't enrolled for the semester but did not elaborate. Boyfriend Vanjae Ramgeet, 24, was charged with aiding and abetting and was also released after 32 days. (More quarantine stories.)

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